He was born in Cardiff, Wales and spent a couple of years in America, where he adapted some short stories by O Henry into two reel films.
[1] He worked for Vitagraph in the United States for five years, then moved to Australia in 1919, where he used his experience as a screenwriter to impress investors to back him making features.
[2] He set up his own production company in Australia but few of his movies were commercially successful.
[3][4][5] He returned to Europe in the 1920s, where he made a British-Belgian film called The Bells (1925), with himself in the lead role of Mathias the innkeeper.
[6] He made at least three Australian films about the famous outlaw Ned Kelly, and near the end of his career remade The Bells in 1935 as The Burgomeister.